


The waiting room

by WanderingBandurria



Series: ComfortMiniFest [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Attempted Kidnapping, Bruises (mentioned), Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Dynamics, First Meetings, Flirting, Fluff, Found Family, Get Together, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Healing, I promise this has fluff, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, SO MUCH THERAPY, Soft Sirius Black, Strangers to Lovers, Therapy, Trauma Recovery, like he's so mature here, mention of other characters, this is just mentioned and no between the pairing of course
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:33:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26893003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingBandurria/pseuds/WanderingBandurria
Summary: Running away doesn’t solve your problems, Remus knows. He still tries after the death of his mother. This is a story about grief, recovery, and love.Or,Remus meets a kind stranger in his therapist's waiting room. They talk for five minutes each time, until one of them is called in.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: ComfortMiniFest [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931170
Comments: 30
Kudos: 151





	The waiting room

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Wow, this fic. I have so much to say about this that I'm suddenly out of words. This was inspired on the prompt "new beginnings" of the last day of SwottyPotter's ComfortMiniFest on Tumblr that took place over September. This doesn't mean you have to read any of the other fics I wrote for that to understand this, they are all stand-alone pieces. I hope you all like this, it was a wonderful journey to write it. This is just my second 100% non-magical AU, so I'm a bit nervous about that. Hopefully you will like this small universe too.  
> A big, big thank you to my two betas in this fic, LikeABellThroughTheNight, who is always helping me with my grammar, and [SwottyPotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/swottypotter), for the help with the plot and rhythm. Go read her works if you haven't yet!  
> This fic deals with trauma recovery, but it's very fluffy in the end, I think. Still, please make sure to read the tags and take care of yourself. Please be kind with yourself and remember that not everyone's process is the same.  
> Hope you like this! I have tons of feelings now.

\---

The city is big, polluted and noisy to the point that it feels dizzying, but it’s still better than being back home where the house was too spacious _and_ suffocating, with his mother’s absence lurking at every corner. In the city at least he's not alone - there are friends ready to take him out for coffee, tea or a sandwich; and even though he still feels lonely, here the memories of his mother are more of a warm presence than an overpowering force. Or they are for the better part of the month, until he gets the white envelope in his ratty mailbox with money, a letter, and some pictures from Remus' childhood. Remus keeps the money and throws the letter in the trash, but he doesn’t know what to do with the pictures. He’s angry because his father is clearly trying to get rid of his presence, _their_ presence in his life, and he’s even more upset with himself because that’s nothing new, so he shouldn’t care. He still gets some comfort at the idea that the pictures mean that his father brought back with him some boxes with his mother’s belongings - the boxes that he got, with everything else, even after being separated from her for over 12 years, because she didn't change her will from before Remus was born which had Lyall as the one inheriting _everything_. 

Guess Remus wasn’t the only one trying to live his life acting like the past never occurred. 

He feels a pang of guilt at the satisfaction he gets at the idea of his father being forced to face what he had, who he was, and who he left behind.

At first, he leaves the pictures on the kitchen counter, but then he moves them to his nightstand. He doesn’t really like them there, so he puts them back on the counter, and then on a shelf, and back to the counter. One night he’s so tired and angry that he throws them on the bed before going out to roam the city. His mind goes blank while he walks, the cold air bringing some numb calmness. He forgets about the photos by the time he gets back home - he doesn’t even turn the light on before taking off his coat and throwing himself on top of the bed, so he wakes up in the morning with a weird crunch when he turns on the bed, finding the pictures under him, full of creases. 

As he looks at the crumpled photographs with bleary eyes, he decides that he’ll buy a notebook to put them in. He feels better after making up his mind, a weight unloading from his chest, so he picks the ones he likes the most - the ones with only him and Hope - and puts them on his nightstand, and the others, he leaves them in a box deep inside his wardrobe, wishing he was the kind of person who had the courage to burn things down. 

Two days later he has a notebook - it’s blue and unassuming, and it has an elastic band to keep things in place, and it makes Remus think of muzzled animals, so he thinks it’s a fitting metaphor for his relationship with his memories. He puts the pictures in the notebook as well as the pressed flowers that his mother gave him after _the incident_. As the weeks drag on, he starts putting other things in too: a handwritten copy of her lemon cake recipe that she had given him when he moved to the city, with the hopes that he would bake it to impress a date (he never did); the receipt for the flowers he got for her funeral, a letter she sent him over a year ago, and a sticker of his Uni mascot that he sent her over six years ago. He had thought the sticker was funny, he remembers thinking so as he stole it from her nightstand - her nightstand at what is his father’s house now - _the house that he could sell at any moment._

He carries the book in his backpack, in his jacket pocket, or even in his hand, but he takes it with him everywhere. The notebook is in his inner jacket pocket the day that, while walking back home, he sees in a shopfront a postcard of a castle that makes him stop in his tracks. He’s overcome by memories of a similar picture that his mum had taken out from an empty biscuit can on the fridge, where it had been jammed with other postcards and photographs that he never got to see. She would then held the picture out for Remus to look at while she told him fantastic stories of dragons fighting to free each other from the curses of their treasures, and princesses fighting their mothers to save their cats, and peasants that defied kings and took over castles to bring the town’s hungry folks inside. 

He enters the store resolutely - he realizes after getting inside that it is a bookstore, warm, piled with old tomes, and smelling like cinnamon. A tall, black girl with a wonderful pierced eyebrow greets him and tells him with shiny eyes and a wonderful smirk that the postcard has been there for years.

When he leaves the store it’s dusk, the postcard is shoved between two blank pages of his notebook, and he has a new job to start on Monday.

Peter is the one who suggests that he see a therapist. It's a Tuesday afternoon and Remus’ eyebags are black yet again. He stumbled through his Uni's hallways during the day with Peter grabbing his arm to stop him from toppling over people. At tea time, Peter asks him about his job - and Remus barely remembers that he has one, and that he has to be there in an hour. Peter rushes with him to the underground, telling him softly about how he had an anxiety attack a few years ago when he was still an undergraduate, and how he almost pulled all of his hair off his head. He says it could be good for Remus to have a bit of help in these hard times, and Remus just sighs and asks him for references. 

He only does so because his mum would have wanted him to.

The next Wednesday he enters a flat with a big living room and a long corridor with four doors. A red-headed woman opens the door for him and asks for his information with a big smile. She offers him tea and retreats to an alcove in the corridor that has a desk jammed in. Remus can hear her hum and ruffle through papers, but when she sits, he can no longer see her. He takes a deep breath, appreciating the solitude while he tries to pull himself together. 

The waiting room is dark and cozy - it’s a living room, _what the hell_ , the couches are big and fluffy and there’s a coffee table where he leaves the tea. There are also some pretty weird paintings and some magazines, so yeah, a waiting room, but there are tons of cushions and shawls as well, and a little statue of a naked woman dancing in the middle of the coffee table.

Remus sits stiffly in the only wooden chair in the room.

He doesn’t cry in the sessions, but sometimes he leaves the flat feeling cold and like he doesn’t belong in his skin. On those days, he walks without knowing where he’s going, too lost in the mental conversations he plays over and over again, in which he adds the angry retorts he wanted to say to Leila, his therapist, but didn’t dare to voice. She’s lovely and sweet, and she has a different set of earrings every week - sometimes single-colour stones or silver hoops, and other times she has crazy, wonderful things that shouldn’t be earrings, like black cats pawing at her hair, or tiny, tiny gnomes sitting down on logs, looking to the sky with annoyed expressions. 

She’s lovely - nothing wrong with her - but somehow, Remus gets angry at what she says quite often. Angrier than he gets with anyone else.

Leila catches him skimming through the pages of his blue notebook one afternoon, and she says that it’s a good idea, that maybe he should write, or draw, or create something of his own in there - maybe try to put his feelings or memories down, or maybe what he thinks he could do next with his life, after he’s finished with his postgrad studies. He tells her that he’ll try, but scoffs all the way back home at the idea. He’s a crappy patient, he thinks, because he’s always saying that he’ll try this or that, and sometimes he does, out of guilt, but he never follows through. 

Nothing that requires effort feels right at the moment, so there's that to work with as an excuse.

On the Wednesday of his fifth session, his head is resting back on the sofa while he reads his mum’s favourite poems, the book hanging from his fingers above his head. He’s trying to decide which one to copy into his notebook so that he can tell Leila that he _did_ put something there when a man enters the waiting room. 

It’s not that Leila is _always_ late, but well, she is sometimes, and Remus is _always_ early, so he ends up with tons of time to kill in the waiting room. He already feels way too comfortable in there. He’s so focused as he flips the pages idly that he jumps in his place when the doorbell sounds and Molly - the secretary - runs, with the clickity-clack of her heels, to open the door. She smiles politely, a bit too tight, and lets in a tall, dark-haired man who looks back at Remus with curiosity after exchanging a couple of words with the woman.

Their eyes meet and Remus smiles like an idiot before blushing and pulling his eyes back to the book. He sits up after realizing he was almost lying on the sofa. _You are not supposed to smile at a therapist’s office_ , he thinks, although he's not completely sure if that’s true or something he decided for himself. He thinks it's some sort of implicit code. He had gone to therapy when he was eleven, after _the incident_ and his parents’ subsequent separation, and everyone was always gloomy there. There weren’t other kids in his former therapist's office, and the waiting room was always crowded with adults looking at the wall with lost eyes, sniffing softly, or playing with their thumbs. Remus would just put his headphones on as he tried to ignore everyone.

But now, over fourteen years later, he can’t stop himself from peeking over his book to look at the stranger. It’s the first time anyone else is here with him - he comes at a weird hour, three pm, so most people are still at work. The man drums his fingers over his knee and looks distractedly at his phone. He looks very cool there, with his tight jeans, his loose white shirt and his black jacket, and Remus looks down miserably at his own corduroy trousers and his faded blue cardigan. He hasn’t put any attention into what he wears over the past three months, but he thinks that if people can’t guess he’s a historian from his appearance, then they probably can’t guess shit _._ His profession might give him freedom from suits and ties, but he still flushes a bit looking at the grease stain from his bike on his trousers and the small hole in his sleeve. He pulls at it until he can put his thumb through the hole. 

He’s playing with the loose threads when he’s startled by the sweet but clear “Remus?” that comes from the hallway.

When he looks up, the stranger is looking at him with a blank expression, and by his side, Leila waits patiently. He stumbles to his feet, dropping his mum’s book of poems, and manages to pick it up while mumbling a quick, “Hi, hey, hi,” before Leila smiles and says “Come on in,” and then turns around to walk back to her office.

\---

The next week the man is there before Remus arrives - he actually opens the door for him, giving him a dazzling smile and a wink, and Remus is already a mess that day because not only did a new letter arrive at his home, but his father actually tried to call him, and even though Remus hung up almost immediately, he still managed to turn his day sour. The stranger doesn't seem to mind Remus’ stillness, because he just turns around and goes back to sit, while Remus shakes himself out of his stupor. "Molly's in the bathroom," the stranger says casually, and Remus hears himself emit a weird, high-pitched laugh as he closes the door.

"Thanks for the update," he says, sitting down and enjoying how the stranger splutters for a second, before starting to laugh.

Remus sits down as the stranger quietens, and he doesn’t know what else to say - he’s not usually one to joke with people he doesn’t know, so he's not sure where to go from here. He takes his blue notebook from his jacket to have something to do, willing to pass the time looking at the pictures. He hears the stranger sigh, but he resists the urge to look up at him. 

“Um,” the stranger says after five minutes of silence, making Remus startle and look up. “Do you…?” he starts, but he’s quickly cut off.

“Sirius?” comes the soft voice of a person that Remus has never seen before, long hair in a braid, a long, peach tunic with golden embroidery and all soft lines. They nod at Remus and then smile at the stranger, _Sirius_ , Remus thinks, trying with all his might to forget the name, as he would do with any other person.

Sirius gets up elegantly, says “Hi, Lou,” and follows his therapist through the hallway.

Remus’ notebook is open on his legs, but when Leila comes to fetch him, his eyes are lost in the painting above the seat where Sirius was, instead of looking at the photo of his mum putting make-up on his cheeks.

\---

On the next Wednesday, Remus bursts into laughter as soon as Molly turns around to let him in. Sirius is there, sitting in one of the sofas in the waiting room, his hair full of glitter.

_Full_ of it.

He feels himself blush as Molly peeks over her shoulder, shaking her head with an indulgent smile. He can’t stop his laughter.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” he says, covering his mouth while still laughing, his eyes panicky at the rudeness of his reaction, even though Sirius is smiling. Remus lets himself fall into an armchair, doubling over his knees, covering his mouth and grabbing his stomach. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing,” he hiccups and tries to breathe in to calm himself. “You look lovely,” he adds before thinking. “I- I mean, I think it’s great that you style yourself as you like,” he stumbles with his words, and his laughter finally dies at his clumsiness.

Sirius smiles brightly at him, and threads his hand through his hair, making a cascade of glitter fall on the backrest of the couch he’s sitting on.

“I’m glad you think _this_ is funny,” he says, pointing at his head, and Remus can see he’s biting his cheek to stop himself from laughing. “Mh, you sure have a lot in common with my fifth-graders. You should come to my class to talk with them about how funny this is,” he says, shaking his head, making glitter fall everywhere.

“Oh no,” Remus says, his hands grabbing his cheeks in mock-horror. He’s not usually this histrionic, but he just laughed at this stranger’s face, and he joked with him last week, so who cares now. 

Not Remus. No _, sir_.

“Oh yes. Apparently, they think it’s _extremely_ funny to spend all of their allowances buying enough glitter to throw a full bucket at their teacher’s back,” he adds, smiling proudly.

“Oh my god,” Remus says, laughing again. “Well, in their defence,” he says, and points with his palm in the general direction of Sirius, making an encompassing movement. “That’s pretty funny,” he adds, while he digs his blue notebook from his backpack.

Sirius is about to say something, but this time, Remus sees Leila coming to invite him in. As Remus looks at the hallway, Sirius turns to follow his eyes.

Leila stops in her tracks and looks surprisedly at Sirius before giving him a slow smile and turning back to Remus. “Ready?” she asks. 

Remus nods and follows her, giving a short, awkward wave as he passes by Sirius. Sirius shakes his head like a dog expelling the water from its fur, sending more glitter onto the couch. Remus snorts loudly, and flushing, speeds up, realizing that Leila is already waiting for him by her office’s door.

Her earrings are gigantic purple half-moons that swing when she walks.

\---

Remus prohibited himself from giving it a second thought after he put the container in his backpack, but well, now that he’s here, he can’t stop second-guessing himself. 

Sirius arrives after him, rushing in and smiling broadly at Remus. His hair is a mess and he looks exhausted as he sits on the fluffy cushions of the sofa in front of Remus. He lets himself lounge there for a minute in which they smile at each other, Remus gathering his courage to talk, but then Sirius takes a binder out of his satchel and starts reading the papers inside of it.

“Um,” Remus starts after a few minutes, and it’s not the best opening, but what else can he do? He’s already flushed and he has five minutes before his session, so it’s now or never. “I made some lemon cake yesterday, would you like some?” he asks, taking the container out of his bag.

What he doesn't say is _I made lemon cake yesterday and got drunk and cried on the floor of my kitchen thinking about my mum,_ because, well, that wouldn’t do. He pushes the container towards Sirius, who smiles brightly.

“Thank you! I’m actually starving,” he says, leaving his binder carelessly on the couch before carefully picking a slice. 

“Oh, no problem,” Remus says, before standing up and going to offer some to Molly, who smiles at him and takes a piece that she puts on a napkin, after mouthing “thank you” wordlessly. Her ear is plastered to a phone while she nods and says softly, “Uh-huh” after “Uh-huh.”

“Mm, it’s delicious!” Sirius says, looking at him delighted, his face covered in crumbs, as Remus sits down back on the couch. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I know your name, even though we meet here every week,” he says with such ease, that Remus is not sure whether it means that Sirius is the most friendly person in the world, or if he actually feels comfortable with Remus.

“Oh. Yeah, I’m Remus,” he says, sitting back down, not daring to take a piece of cake, too afraid of starting to cry the second he tastes it.

“I’m Sirius,” he says, smiling softly back at Remus. “That’s a really good lemon cake. Do you like baking?” he asks, his eyes going back and forth between Remus’ eyes and the container.

Remus snorts and pushes the container back to Sirius, who smiles impishly and takes another piece.

“Not really. It’s actually the first time I've baked,” and at Sirius' look of disbelief, he realizes he’ll have to elaborate. He swallows the lump in his throat. It’s still weirdly easy to talk with this man. “It’s my mum's recipe, she knew I wouldn’t be any good in the kitchen so she left me all of her recipes with step-by-step instructions.”

Sirius smiles again while he chomps happily. Remus sees him swallow fast.

“That was nice of her,” he says, with something soft in his eyes. “I’m glad you decided to try your hand at this then, and to bring some to share with strangers in the waiting room of your therapist’s office.” 

Remus lets a startled laugh leave his mouth. 

“Yes, well. My therapist has been pushing me a bit to try doing things related to my mum, so I thought that the least I could do was bring the results. This way, if I ended up making poison, all of us will suffer the consequences,” he says, his heart beating fast against his ribcage. He cringes a bit at his words - he shouldn’t be talking about his mum, not with Sirius. He knows he’s oversharing, but he doesn’t seem capable of controlling his mouth. 

He sort of wishes to disappear into the couch, even though Sirius is looking at him with understanding and something soft, that Remus really, really hopes isn’t pity.

Sirius opens his mouth, but then he closes it and nods. He frowns and seems to be thinking a bit more.

“Do you think you made something poisonous?” he ends up asking, making Remus laugh again.

“Well, that’s the worst part, isn’t it?” he says, still laughing, although it’s a bit more maniacal now, and he feels some tears fall down his cheeks. “I have no idea! I couldn’t even try it, and it’s not like I can ask anyone if I made a mistake in the steps!” and he’s still laughing, although he’s desperately batting at the tears falling down his face.

Sirius is still smiling at him while he sucks the last crumbles off his fingers. Remus is grateful that he acts like the tears are because of Remus' laughter. He manages to sober up after a couple of deep breaths, and dries the last tears off his face with his sleeve while he sniffles and sighs.

“Sorry,” he says, and before he can think more about it, he reaches forward, takes a gigantic piece of lemon cake, and shoves it into his mouth. 

He has to close his eyes immediately to avoid starting to cry again. He slumps against the couch and groans while he munches. It tastes like his mum’s lemon cake. It tastes like home. It tastes like family.

“It’s really good, Remus. You did a great job,” he hears Sirius say softly, and he has to keep his eyes firmly closed while he nods, because he can feel the tears welling up. He sniffs again and rubs his sleeves over his eyes. 

“Remus?” comes Leila’s voice - so soft, so kind, but still startling him. He doesn't care much about anything right now, since he’s been practically crying with another patient in the waiting room, so he talks while still having his mouth stuffed with cake.

“Hey, Leila. Want some cake?” and he manages to finally swallow.

Leila smiles softly, accommodating her shawl. Her earrings are a couple of witches on broomsticks and they hit against her neck as she shakes her head.

“No, thank you, I just had lunch,” she says, still smiling and not moving. Remus shrugs and pulls his backpack from the couch.

“Suit yourself. Do you want the rest of it, Sirius?” and he knows he’s being rude to Leila, but he doesn’t really care at the moment, so he turns and looks back at Sirius, who seems surprised for just a second, before smiling brightly.

“Yeah, sure. Thanks, Remus,” he says, taking the last two pieces from the container so that Remus can put the empty box back in his bag.

When he turns back, Leila is still there, smiling enigmatically. 

“Let’s go,” she says, before turning away.

Remus takes a deep breath, turns around and, with a grimace, waves goodbye to Sirius.

“Bye,” says Sirius, his mouth full of cake.

“Bye,” says Remus, feeling very tired all the sudden, before turning around to get to the hallway and his therapist’s office.

\---

Sirius gives him an origami flower the next week. 

“Had to go and watch over the second grade yesterday,” he says, smiling. “They had to make these, and I thought I should have something to thank you for feeding me last week,” and even though his smile is charming, it’s also a bit shy. There’s something honest in Sirius’ eyes that makes Remus realize all of a sudden that he’s _crushing_ on this stranger.

So Remus smiles at him, says “thank you,” and asks him about his work. When Leila comes to get him, they are talking animatedly about the fifth graders’ projects for the next science fair.

Next Wednesday, Sirius is not there. Remus is in the office a bit earlier than usual, and Molly smiles at him a bit sadly. When Remus is ushered into Leila’s office, he thinks that maybe Molly knew that Sirius wasn’t coming, and maybe she’d caught on to Remus’ little crush.

So when he goes back to his therapist the following week, a month and a half since Sirius appeared in the waiting room for the first time, he doesn’t get there early - or at least, not _that_ early. He’s only five minutes before his session. He's not expecting anything, not that he was before. 

He's been feeling a bit better as sessions go by, and today is a good day - he actually washed his hair and chose his clothes - some tight, dark jeans and a white sweater that makes him feel comfortable and not-so-much of a librarian. Or at least, not the unattractive kind of librarian. He had coffee with Peter after lunch and he talked a bit about his relationship with his father. And yesterday, he and Dorcas - the girl from his work - put some music on and they chatted about afro-punk while having tea and bobbing their heads to the music.

So when Molly opens the door with a smile and a "hello, dear," he smiles back and thinks that well, maybe today he’ll open up with Leila about some things from his past. 

And then he sees Sirius on the couch. 

He has a bruise on his cheek that it's mostly covered with make-up, but that Remus can still guess it’s there, fading up to a dark green.

"Sirius," he says in a sigh without realizing it, going to sit on the couch by his side, his knees angled so that he can look at his face. "Um. Are you okay?"

Sirius looks at him weirdly for a second, and he looks like he's battling between anger, shame, and resignation.

"Fuck. Sorry, I know we barely know each other, I shouldn’t…" and as he starts to say his apology, he sits a bit further to the corner of the couch, leaving some space between them.

But Sirius looks at him blankly for a second, all the emotions disappearing from his face before he starts laughing.

“It’s alright,” Sirius says, his hand jerking forward like he’s about to reach for Remus’ shoulder. He stops mid-movement, changing the trajectory so that his fingers rearrange his hair instead. “I’m fine. Thank you for asking,” he says, and he smiles genuinely. There’s something in his eyes that tells Remus that he’s truly grateful to be asked about it, even though he doesn’t seem keen to dig deeper into what happened to him. Remus is alright with that. They look into each other’s eyes for a second, before Sirius looks over Remus’ shoulder. “Oh. Hey, Lou."

"Ready, Sirius?" Remus hears them ask, his eyes still fixed on Sirius, who looks back at him for a second, smiling softly.

“Yeah. See you around, Remus,” and with that, Sirius gets up and passes between Remus’ legs and the table to follow his therapist.

Remus is looking at the wall when Leila comes to get him, his frown set and guilt bubbling in his stomach.

\---

“I think I’m crushing on a guy that goes to therapy at the same time that I do,” he blurts out to Dorcas on Monday. He’s been getting more and more nervous about the five minutes before his next session. He can’t stop wondering if he overstepped Sirius’ boundaries too badly, and if Sirius was just being nice because they have to see each other every week. And when he’s not thinking about that, his mind goes over that _see you around_ again and again, and if maybe Sirius meant something by it.

He tries to not get his hopes up, but he can’t stop his heartbeat losing control at the mere possibility.

Dorcas smiles at him, catlike.

“Oh? Is that why you look so nervous lately? What’s the problem with that?”

Remus shrugs.

“I think I made a fool out of myself a couple of times. He’s seen me without a shower, with the worst clothes I own, and I have had a couple of ridiculous reactions with him - may have overshared a bit and pried into his personal business without invitation, and…”

“Alright, alright,” Dorcas says, still smiling and handing him his warm tea. Remus takes a big gulp, grateful. “So, why don’t you ask him out? If you already have made a fool out of yourself - which I honestly doubt -, what else do you have to lose?”

“What do I have to lose?” Remus splutters, and Dorcas just laughs in his face at that. “What do _I have to lose_ \- seriously, Dorcas? Well, do you want the complete list or just a summary?” 

“A summary would be fine, thank you,” she smiles cheekily.

“Alright. First, he says no. We keep meeting every Wednesday, awkwardly waiting there -”

“Eh, not too bad. If it gets too uncomfortable, you just ask your therapist to change your day or hour,” she says, shrugging and blowing on her coffee.

“Or he says no and thinks I’m a stalker or a creep,” he continues like he hasn’t heard her.

“Not your business what he thinks, just what he says. And if he thinks so, he’s an idiot so you shouldn’t care about what he thinks,” she takes a sip of her coffee.

“Ha, how amusing, if only it was _that_ easy for me to not care what other people think. Alright, alright, I can change the day of my therapy sessions, just to make you happy and see the other scenarios, because I think that him saying no is not the worst one. Now, he says yes. What does that say about him?”

“That he can see beyond the snot and dirty sweaters, that’s what it says,” she answers under her breath.

“Well, isn’t it unethical to ask out someone who goes to therapy… er… in the same place you do? What if _he_ ’s the creep, and I realize that after a date, and now he knows where to find me once a week?” he says, while passing a hand over his hair.

“Remus,” Dorcas says, getting serious, leaving her coffee on the counter and putting both her hands on his shoulders, forcing him to look at her. “Listen to me, man. That could happen with anyone, doesn’t matter if you met them in a bar, by a mutual friend, or I don’t know, a fucking dating app. People can go berserk no matter where you meet them. The fact that you are scared of that because you met him in therapy is a bit fucked up. If anything, it’s a _good_ thing that he’s in therapy. Just, get over your bullshit and ask him out,” she says, pats his cheek a couple of times, and picks up their empty mugs to bring them back to the kitchenette.

Remus takes a deep breath. Right. Normal people don’t worry about stalkers at every turn. He shouldn’t be worried about this. He knows the shadows of his past can’t reach him in the present.

He’ll talk about this fear with Leila next Wednesday. 

\---

“What are you always writing in that notebook?” Sirius asks him next Wednesday, after five minutes of awkward silence. 

“Um,” he says, looking up startled, his hand pausing with the pen in the air, mid-phrase. He flushes, feeling his heartbeat fast in his ears.

“I know I’m prying and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Sirius says, raising his hands like he’s surrendering. “But I guessed that, since you asked me how I was last week, I might as well ask you something about yourself,” he says, with a soft smile. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.”

Remus realizes that he _does_ want to tell him.

“Well… I started writing a couple of weeks ago actually. I keep memories of my mum here - photos, souvenirs, whatever makes me think of her. She passed away six months ago,” and Sirius mutters ‘I’m sorry’, but Remus just waves his hand to emphasize that’s not the point. “She used to tell me these wonderful stories set in fantasy medieval times, but they were _very_ different from your classical Arthurian stories. They were about people freeing each other, fighting for animals, um, I don’t know, dethroning kings. It’s hard to explain. I’ve been trying to write stories that are like hers, but that are mine, to sort of connect with what she taught me,” he says, looking bashfully at the statue on the coffee table.

“Oh, that sounds incredible,” and Sirius’ voice sounds completely honest. “Will you tell me one?” Remus looks up at him with disbelief, but Sirius just smiles back. “You can invent one right now for me, right?”

“What, now?” Remus asks, his eyes opening wide. There’s no sight of Molly, and he knows they still have at least ten minutes, but he still feels weirdly exposed. 

He feels his imagination swirling and tangling with memory, his past bubbling to the surface, and weirdly, he doesn’t feel scared about that. It’s like he’s drifting in the place that memory and imagination meet, and instead of being terrifying, it’s weirdly soothing. He feels the ideas for a story pushing through his thoughts.

“Yeah, why not? It doesn’t have to be anything fancy or too emotional. Just tell me a rebellious fairy tale,” Sirius says, still smiling, making Remus laugh.

“Alright, alright, but don’t hope for much. I’ll make it up on the go,” he says, flushing a bit, not sure why he’s agreeing, except because his heart is pounding in his ears and the words eager to get out of his mouth. He feels warm and _seen_ , instead of exposed. He frowns and breathes, trying to put some order to the avalanche of ideas and images that come to his mind. He can see by the corner of his eye how Sirius sits close to the edge of the couch, his full attention on Remus. “Um. Once upon a time, there was this… girl. She loved music and butterflies, and to walk around fields telling stories to the shepherds and farmers. She loved making them smile, and they seemed to get stronger after listening to her, reinvigorated before going back to work. Some of them started calling her… er… The Inspirer - Don’t laugh!” but Sirius just shakes his head, a soft smile still on his face. “Because it was like her voice would make their limbs less heavy and their hearts lighter. So, er. One day, a counsellor of the prince went to the fields to, I don’t know, supervise, and he heard this girl and he realized that she had powerful magic, so he convinced the prince to bring her to the castle so that she could use her gift only for the royalty. Since the prince was greedy and wanted all the power he could find, he sent his counsellor to bring her in. And so in the night the counsellor climbed into the girl’s room and kidnapped her, leaving some silver coins on her nightstand as compensation. So when the girl woke up, she was in the palace, surrounded by silks and gold, but instead of being happy as they expected, she started to plead for them to bring her back home. The counsellor tried to convince her to sing, to do that for her prince, but even when he begged and offered luxuries and threatened her, nothing worked, so they put shackles on her wrists and forced her to go to court. They told her that they'd hurt her family and the shepherds if she didn’t sing. So she sang, sad and miserable, and her singing made everyone marvel. Rumours started to go around saying that the girl’s singing made people younger and healthier, becoming famous amongst royalty. So day after day, they pulled her out of bed by her shackles and made her sing in court, where princes and princesses from other kingdoms gathered for her powers. The girl was having the worst time of her life, so she decided to make a plan. She started talking with the servant who brought her food, a girl of her own age, and managed to convince her to pass a message to the folks in town, so that…”

“Remus?” Leila interrupts him, making him and Sirius jump, breaking the eye contact that they kept during the whole story. Remus flushes at the proud smile on Leila’s face, and he chuckles nervously. 

“Hey, Leila. Guess you’ll have to wait until next week to know the end, won’t you?” he asks back to Sirius, grabbing his backpack and smiling.

“Oh,” Sirius says, and he falls back to the sofa, sighing. “I won’t be here next week. The week after that one?” he asks, looking up at Remus, with something like hope in his eyes.

Remus nods.

“Yeah. See you then, Sirius.”

“Thanks for the story, Remus,” he says and Remus can’t stop himself from smiling.

\---

“So, did you ask your guy out?” Peter asks next Friday, while they walk towards the Prewetts’ flat.

“He’s not _my guy_ , Peter,” Remus says resolutely.

“Alright, alright,” Peter says, raising his hands in mock surrender. “But did you?”

Remus sighs.

“No. He wasn’t there this week.”

Peter frowns.

“I thought he was going to be back this Wednesday.”

“Yeah, well. He wasn’t. Would you just drop it now, Pete? It’s not that of a big deal. It’s not like there was anything there. It was probably in my mind.”

Peter sighs.

“Well, doesn’t matter. I’m happy that you are looking better, mate. Is therapy working for you then?”

Remus smiles back, stopping in front of the red building of their friends before pushing the small intercom button.

“Yeah, it is.”

\---

Sirius is not there the next week either. Nor the one after that. And since it is already September, he assumes that, if Sirius was on holiday, he should be getting back soon, since schools already started.

“Hello, Molly,” he greets her next Wednesday. “Um. I know this might be inappropriate but… Er, did something happen to Sirius? Is he alright?”

Molly looks at him with indecisive eyes.

“I think he is fine, darling. But I’m not sure, and I don’t know much. Lou told me that he wasn’t coming back and that I should clear their weekly schedule slot. They didn’t seem too worried, though.”

Remus nods, knowing perfectly well that Molly is already telling him more than she’s supposed to. He goes back to the waiting room and lets himself fall on a couch.

He’s looking up to the ceiling when Leila comes to fetch him. Her earrings are two black stones with a silver glint that look heavy on her ears. Remus gets up and smiles at his therapist.

“Hi, Leila. Lovely earrings,” he says, walking past her. 

She stays put, slightly shocked at the compliment.

“Thank you,” she mutters, pleased, walking behind Remus.

\---

His father passes away six months after his last therapy session, but he doesn’t feel like he needs to go back to work on it. He’d worked on his feelings about the man enough to know that it’s alright to feel sad, instead of punishing himself for it. 

What he doesn't expect is his father leaving his mother’s house to him, nor him leaving him money. He didn’t read a single letter he sent, and he blocked every phone number with which he’d tried to contact him. He was fairly sure Lyall would find someone else to leave the house to.

He feels like he’s in a dream as he travels once again to the small town where he grew up, where all his memories get muddled. He passes green and yellow fields, soft-looking hills, and lonely trees. He leaves the city with all the buildings piled on top of each other to see barely one or two houses every other fifteen minutes. He feels like he's travelling in time as well as in space.

He’s taken a week off from work to check everything in the house, hoping that it's enough to settle things, and then… well, he thinks he’s going to sell. If he had gotten the house when his mother died, he would have never done it. He guesses that maybe he has something to be grateful to his father for, after all.

He gets off his bus feeling a bit nauseated, but that’s not too bad, he thinks. The sound of the doors closing behind him makes a chill run down his back. He walks all the way to the house he grew in, and it’s a short way because the town is small - a long street, a few side alleys, some stores and ugly houses with the paint peeling away and wild gardens where he wonders how many rats’ nests there are. 

When he gets to his old childhood home, everything is quiet. He remembers that sometimes when he got home from school the house would be ominously silent - Hope out, her radio silenced and her soft humming absent. He barely dares to breathe, and every sound he makes feels out of place. He can see the dust on the sheets he left over the furniture, but he manages to stop the sneeze threatening to break the solemn silence.

The sheets cast oblique shadows on the walls, and he’s surprised that it doesn’t smell like his mother anymore. He can only get the smell of confinement and humidity.

He sets himself to work to stop himself from crying. He has to clean and decide how to sell things. He has no idea how to proceed around all his childhood things - he has no place to store them and he doesn’t know what people usually do in these situations. Peter offered to help him, but Remus said he needed to do this on his own. Now he’s even more sure of that being the right decision, even though he feels like breaking the windows and throwing chairs to the walls and curling into a ball and crying.

He sighs, drops his backpack on the floor, puts a green scarf over his hair, and pulls the white sheet off the couch.

\---

He runs into Sirius two days later, when he’s a bit more settled in. He now dares to put music on and sing idly while he cleans the counters and mops the floors. At least now he has taken his mother’s bedroom, instead of sleeping on his own tiny, creaking bed that could barely fit him, like he did during the week he was here for his mum’s funeral.

After being here for the last forty-eight hours, he’s quite exhausted. Still, he’s at his old primary school because he’s donating part of his mum’s things to them - some desks and chairs, and some of her paintings. She used to give one or two away every year for the raffles to gather funds for the kids with fewer resources, and everyone always went crazy trying to win Hope’s paintings.

He’s laughing with Ms. Snyde, the secretary, who is still very sweet and remembers most of the cheeky responses that landed him in detention, when someone comes to the office to ask for some documents, just to cut themselves off in the middle of the phrase.

Remus turns, a soft smile still on his face, and there, in front of him, looking absolutely starstruck, is Sirius.

“Hey,” Remus says, swallowing and raising his chin, trying to look strong and like Sirius' presence isn’t doing weird things to his heart.

Sirius opens his mouth, taking a shaky breath.

“Oh, Remus, this is Mr. Black. He teaches fifth grade - he joined us this year. Sirius, this is Remus Lupin, he went to school here,” she says, standing up. “Are you here with the proposal for the after-school programme, Sirius? I’ll go check if Ms. Bagshot is available. Give me a minute,” she says, disappearing through the hallway that Remus knows leads to the principal’s office.

“Remus,” Sirius says, as soon as Ms. Snyde turns down the hallway, “It’s so good to see you. I - well, I moved here in a rush, and by the time I was settled enough to think to leave a message with Molly…”

“What?” Remus asks, and he laughs a bit, feeling something warm blossom in his chest. “You don’t have to explain, Sirius. I’m just happy that you are alright,” he says, and he smiles genuinely this time.

“No, yes, but the thing is, ah, fuck,” Sirius says, and he passes a hand over his hair. He sighs then, a bit dejected. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again - not now, not by pure serendipity, and I just, I don’t know how to put order in my mind,” he explains, looking fixedly at Remus.

“Sirius?” comes the voice of the secretary from behind Remus, making them both jump. “Ms. Bagshot can see you now,” Ms. Snyde says.

Remus can’t stop himself. Laughter bursts out from deep within his chest.

“Shit, just like old times, hm?” Sirius mutters under his breath. “I’ll be there in a minute, Addie,” he says, and then he walks resolutely towards Remus and touches his elbow softly to get his attention. “Would you meet me at five at the coffee shop?” he asks, and he’s so earnest that Remus manages to stop laughing and fix his eyes on Sirius. He looks sincere and vulnerable.

“Yeah. But I’ll take you somewhere else. Somewhere that’s worth it,” he says, pushing his chin up again.

Sirius smiles, nods, and squeezes his elbow.

“I’ll see you in a bit, then.”

\---

“Remus,” Sirius says as soon as they are close enough to be heard. He’s smiling brightly and he’s almost breathless after running down the street towards Remus, who saw him approaching with his own heart beating fast. When Sirius is closer, Remus is yet again struck about how handsome the man is. He’s wearing the same clothes as before - an unassuming black shirt and black jeans. He still makes Remus’ stomach feel too hollow all of a sudden. “I’m so glad you are here, I -”

Remus shakes his head and with his heart beating fast in his ears, hoping he hasn’t misunderstood everything, he takes Sirius’ hand and pulls him in the same direction he came from. Sirius laughs, squeezes his fingers, and follows him, as Remus strides as fast as he can.

“Come on,” he says, looking over his shoulder to smile at Sirius. “I’ll take you to a place tourists don’t know,” he says, and his heart doubles its beating when Sirius squeezes his hand back again.

“Alright. But you better have some of your lemon cake in that backpack, because I’m starving.”

“No lemon cake,” Remus says laughing, pulling Sirius so they start to jog. “But I did bring some food. Now come on!” 

When they arrive at the cliff, Sirius pulls at his hand, making Remus snap back to his side. He’s breathless and the afternoon sun feels wonderful against his skin. The trees cast soft shadows and the lake at the bottom of the cliff shines like a mirror.

“This is beautiful,” Sirius says in a soft voice, taking in his surroundings, from the tall, green trees, the brown of the cliffs, to the almost purple lake. 

“Yeah, it is,” Remus says softly, allowing himself to look at the place like it’s new. This was one of _his_ places, but he feels like he can see it anew through Sirius’ eyes. The spring light makes the green look so much brighter and livelier than he remembered. “I used to come here all the time when I lived here, to think and try to figure things out when everything was too much,” he says, and he feels Sirius squeezing his hand, so he looks back at him. 

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Sirius says softly, his hand coming to Remus’ cheek to softly pass his thumb across his jaw.

And if Remus had any doubt left about this being a date, now he doesn’t, so he decides to just go for it, right now, no waiting. He leans forward, hearing Sirius’ breath hitch, and he stops when their lips are about to touch.

“No problem,” he mutters before Sirius pushes forward to press their lips together.

Remus is not sure for how long they kiss, but he feels like a teenager - like the teenager he never got to be here - losing all concept of time and pulling Sirius closer and closer. His arms move around Sirius’ waist, feeling him shake under his fingers.

“Ah, I’m so glad that you got the message that this was me asking you out,” Sirius says while he sighs against his neck, making Remus whimper softly. “I was worried that you might have thought that I just wanted to catch up or something.”

Remus laughs and takes a step away, kissing Sirius once again before grabbing his backpack, forgotten on the floor, to pull a blanket and some food containers out of it. “I thought you might want me to finish your story at first,” and Sirius just smiles and nods, so Remus snorts happily. “But when you let me grab your hand and pull you halfway across town, I got the inkling that you might be interested,” he says, and he smiles.

Sirius laughs.

“Remus, of course I’m interested. I meant to ask you out from the second time I saw you, but I didn’t want to scare you, so I was waiting for you to do something,” he says, helping Remus to spread the blanket, and then flopping down on it, grabbing Remus’ hand and pulling softly at it. Remus falls willingly, letting the food containers clash on the ground, and Sirius accommodates him between his arms.

Later, much later, after they eat and talk about obvious things - Sirius moving here, and what they’d been up to the last eight months, as well as everything related to their everyday lives -, when the sun is setting and Remus’ head rests against Sirius’ chest, he tells Sirius about his mum, and her paintings featuring fantastic creatures and powerful women, and how much he hated the town and the kids his age. Sirius threads his fingers through his hair and stays quiet, and Remus talks softly about his school years, and how he felt out of place, having the weight of being his father’s son, and how he found solace in books and nature. He breathes in and out, finding beautiful small anecdotes where he never found them before, feeling his head swim in calmness with every up-and-down of Sirius’ chest.

Sirius squeezes his shoulder with his hand, soft and secure as Remus lets his memories drift and pull, as he dares to hint at the things that happened with his dad. Sirius’ other hand comes to softly thread up his arm. Remus talks quietly about his dad having a parallel relationship, which in itself wasn’t much of a problem - nothing that wouldn’t have ended with Hope separating from him, with him moving away, like sometimes happens -, but it became a big one when his mistress lost it and tried to kidnap Remus. As Remus talks, he feels like he’s not completely himself, like time is slowing down and his head is too light and too heavy, and he can see his body shake. He’s hit by the fear of being _too much, too soon,_ but Sirius just hums and squeezes him closer, and Remus realizes that there’s no rush to tell him about it in detail, but no need to keep everything secret either.

He doesn’t want to cry, as he thought he would do if he ever came close to tell anyone, aside from his therapists. Instead, he smiles at the realization that Sirius _is_ listening, but he’s also waiting - Sirius won’t push. He feels lighter, fitting back into his skin slowly, being pulled back by life running through his veins. They stay quiet for a second to watch the sun disappear between the hills.

It’s weird to not feel the pressure to unload his whole past immediately, and it’s even more strange to not feel like a liar for _not_ doing it. He doesn’t feel like a con-man, as he always did in his other relationships, where he felt like he was luring his partners in just to hit them later with the weight of his past. For the first time, he feels like he’s not setting this, whatever _this_ between them is, up for failure, just because _there’s no way anyone would ever sign up for it._

It feels like he can breathe because he _can_ talk about it if he wants, and he won’t be defined by that, but he can also not talk about it _yet_ \- not _ever_ , if he wants - and it’ll still be alright. 

He feels such a pull towards Sirius, that he doesn’t need to mull over his own past. He wants to know about this man too, so he asks Sirius about himself, and Sirius talks about his best friend, his wife and their kid with a smile on his face, and about leaving his family when he was sixteen with a quiet calmness. 

He talks with his voice breaking about his brother, who despised him until reappearing in his life last year. 

He talks about deciding to study to be a teacher and his last meaningful relationship, and then he pulls Remus on top of him, and asks him between kisses, almost breathless, how long he’s staying in town. Remus says in a soft moan that he has until Saturday, so Sirius gently pushes him so that Remus lays on his back on the blanket, and gently positions himself on top of him, muttering “fuck, alright, I guess we’ll have to find a way to make this work.” 

Remus feels his chest squeeze at the softness of it all, and while Sirius’ fingers trail down Remus’ chest, ribs and waist, he finds himself nodding, feeling sure that _they will make it work,_ and reaching down to catch those fingers and bring them to his lips, to softly kiss every one of them.

When the night catches up with them, they are wrapped up in the blanket, Sirius’ head resting on Remus’ shoulder. Remus tells him in a hushed voice about the girl in the castle that used her voice to make everyone sleep and let the people from the town get into the castle, so they would kill all the lords, counsellors, and princes. He tells Sirius about them walking back to town with the former servants, leaving the castle to burn. And when Sirius shivers and pulls him closer, he adds how the girl’s mother took her and the servant girl that bought her food in her arms and carried them back home.

\---

Two weeks later Remus is still in town, and Sirius is there, holding his hand, as he burns the photos of his family that he kept in the box in his wardrobe for over a year.

The fire casts wonderful shadows on the walls of his mother’s house, and Sirius' presence is solid and ethereal all the same time. 

He burns every single photo, smiling with tears in his eyes.

\---

Four weeks later, Remus is back in town when Sirius tells him about his family. They sit on Sirius’ bed and Remus stays in silence as they hold hands and their tea cools down. Sirius tells him about running into his mother last year, and how she slapped him in the face in the middle of the street for _taking Regulus away_ , bruising his face with her rings. He talks about the name-calling, the hidden bruises when he was a kid, and finding love and shelter with the Potters. He talks about deciding to leave the city so that he doesn’t risk meeting with his family ever again.

The next weekend they travel in Sirus’ old car to the small city where James, Lily and Harry live so that they meet Remus. They listen to 90s songs and the car rattles and shakes every time Sirius changes gears, and Remus thinks he has never been this happy.

\---

**EPILOGUE**

“Where do you want the boxes, Padfoot?” James asks, with a big cardboard box balanced between his hip and his hand, the other one keeping Harry’s ankle against his chest for good measure. Harry points at the ceiling and talks non-stop about what he likes about the house, grabbing his father’s hair with his muddy hands. James endures it stoically. 

“Just there in the living room, we’ll organize them later,” Sirius says, following him, stopping by the door and making Lily crash against his back and huff indignantly. He smiles over his shoulder at her, showing her the camera in his hands, so she just nods and puts her box on the floor. Sirius pushes the camera against his face and clicks once, twice, thrice. 

“Come on, Sirius, let us in. These things are fucking heavy,” Remus complains from behind Lily, and Peter just hums from behind them.

Sirius moves quickly away from the door, and Lily rolls her eyes as she picks the box back up and walks in. She coos at Harry and says that the house is gorgeous. Harry repeats “gorgeous, mum!” as best as he can, and throws himself down from his father’s shoulders towards Lily, who manages to drop the box and catch him in one movement, laughing as James holds his son’s empty shoe in his hand, looking at it like he can’t believe that this creature is doing the _exact same things he used to do._

When Remus passes by Sirius’ side his arms are still holding a box, but he smiles brightly and leans to give him a quick kiss. Behind them, Peter coos - maybe at them, maybe at Harry getting raspberries on his cheeks and laughing. Maybe at all of it. 

“So,” James says, standing in the middle of the living room. “When are we having a housewarming party?” 

Remus laughs and leaves the box on the floor, and goes back to stand by Sirius, who’s taking picture after picture of him as he walks towards him. Remus rolls his eyes and extends his hand. Sirius pulls him in, and Remus goes willingly, crashing against his chest with an “oof”. He snuggles in between Sirius’ arms, and breathes deeply while he hears Sirius say “when hell freezes, James, because after the downpayment for this, we won’t have money for the next ten years.”

Remus shakes his head, smiling against Sirius’ jacket as he hears James proclaim indignantly that they can have the party with just their closest friends, and they can organize it so that everyone chips in. Harry backs his father up, with a joyful “party!” and Peter doesn’t find anything better to do than joining him to see who can scream the word louder.

Remus breathes in, breathes out. The house smells like Sirius, wood, and _family._ He feels his new notebook - this one is grey, like Sirius’ eyes - poking at his ribs, and he grabs Sirius’ side tightly, sighing, before turning in his partner’s arms, to smile at his friends and say, “alright, you’re in charge then, Prongs.”

\---

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Well, I still have a lot of feelings about this one. I hope you liked it. Let me know what you think in the comments, if you want.  
> You can follow me on [Tumblr](https://wanderingbandurria.tumblr.com/) for some extra wolfstar content!


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